The Substantially Similar Weblog

Via Steve: I had never seen this ad, but apparently it was a classic:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W16qzZ7J5YQ[/youtube]

The remake:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE[/youtube]

Same actors?

[Tags]Wassup, Budweiser, Obama, Election[/Tags]

Growing up for the most part in the 1980’s, Saturday Night Live was the funniest regularly scheduled part of my week. It’s either gotten less funny over the years, or I’ve changed. Probably both.

One of the biggest problems SNL faces is that it must fill ninety minutes every week, although these days if you subtract out ads, music, and other filler/transitional material,  I expect it’s only thirty to forty minutes of actual comedy. Either way, a lot of SNL skits go on longer than necessary to deliver their comic payload. I expect this was actually true in the 1980’s as well, but I didn’t notice it so much.

Enter The Onion and its video content.  Freed from the confines of the television programming schedule, the Onion can make its online video clips just exactly as long as the writers want, and release them on their own schedule. In recent months, they’ve been batting in the high 800s. E.g., Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early (on a serious note, see Ed Felten’s recent Sequoia discovery and followup); Army Holds Annual ‘Bring Your Daughter to War’ Day. Or any of them, really.

White House Press Secretary Spins Wife’s Tragic Death As A Positive

Army Holds Annual ‘Bring Your Daughter To War’ Day

My only complaint about The Onion video content is that they have only one sponsor at any given time, and they make you watch the same exact ad (both as a short pre-mercial and a longer post-mercial) every time you watch a video. The repetition isn’t effective and I can’t imagine it’s the best use of the Onion’s advertising revenue. I suggest at least rotation ads — or better yet, only forcing an ad on the viewer after every nth video.

Thanks to Steve and Flour for the key insight about clip-length.

[Tags]The Onion, Saturday Night Live[/Tags]

Via Steve Via Ze: Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing. “Very funny.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPsUmhqncAg[/youtube]

A sequel. “Also funny”:

Via Steve:

Why didn’t I think of that for my kid?

Via Jamie, this hilarious This American Life parody (direct link to MP3 if the embedding doesn’t work for you). This guy obviously has listened to a lot of episodes of the show. (I expect this parody will be funny only if you have, as well.)

Speaking of funny embeddable videos, here’s another one that will appeal to at least some segment of my readers. I don’t know if this one has already made the rounds and I’m late for the memetrain. If so, I blame the fact that I’m getting on in years.

And here, via Tikirobot, is a not-funny video about Dasher, an amazing information-efficient typing system. Again, I suspect I’m late to the party on this one:

I’ve been reading The Onion since the late 90’s when I lived in Chicago and could pick up the paper version at any street corner. Recently I’ve wondered how long they can continue given the relatively small set of story structures they tend to use. Now they’re providing video, though, and my faith is restored. They even provide convenient HTML code for embedding (although I expect this won’t translate well into my RSS feed):

In The Know: Life Before The Segway

Dewar’s is staking out a significant presence in the web video universe. I first noticed them when they sponsored the permanent archives of the Zefrank Show — now they’re everywhere.

There must be an interesting legal issue or two just about to surface with advertising in this sort of syndicated embedded video content. I’m not sure exactly what it is yet, but watch out, it’s coming.